family, cycling and communications

Start of the week was asked to talk with clients about how we use social media tools in IBM and demo some of the many we have. As any one in IBM knows, we have loads of tools but the one they had heard of was Beehive. We also went through Fringe, Cattail and Connections. The people were mostly from Internal Communications with a developer thrown in, which makes me think that they were looking for ideas to come up with something homegrown.

Then today, day 2 of our Communications training, I got to show our own team some of the things I “play” with and that actually, they are useful, and no, it’s not just my job to use them, it is my job to help YOU use them. Again mention Fringe, Cattail, Media Library, Dogear and BlogCentral. I hope they just start with one each.

The usual question came up, “What tool do I use and how do I use them?”

There is obviously a way to share a file in Cattail for example but many more advantages and scenarios that it can be beneficial – someone the day before asked if I knew what Roo Reynolds presentations contained, I said, have a look on his Cattail page.. bingo!

Select one tool at a time, play and give it time, if it isn’t easy or getting you results after a couple of months, try something else.

Make time to play and enjoy it – it shouldn’t be a chore.

If you like it, keep using it and try something else new on top of it.

Don’t be afraid to give feedback to the developers – don’t give it to me, I’m not going to change anything for you.. how can I?

For the love of god, get an rss reader and save your time surfing.

Then later today got an email from a colleague who would like me to talk to more clients… oh this is so odd.

2 thoughts on “Internal communications and social media”

2 clients in 11 years.. yeah I think the tide is turning. Watch out everyone.

Of course what is more interesting (perhaps) is that these opportunities came about not because my management asked me but because of social media – the person that recommended me has never met me. That wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.